


Perfectly Normal

by Everlind



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: M/M, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2013-07-01
Packaged: 2017-12-16 18:51:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/865408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Everlind/pseuds/Everlind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Ohtori Choutarou wishes he'd knocked first (only totally not).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perfectly Normal

There's cool tiles against his cheek and cooler water pelting down on his neck. Cold enough to sting a little by now. But Ohtori's cheeks glow warm, still, hours after. He burns and shivers at the same time. The streaming shower shuts out all noise, but for the drumming of his heart. His fingers are wrinkled, numb. It must be past supper time.

Ohtori's hungry, but he doesn't think he could eat if he wanted to.

He keeps seeing it. Him. Shishido-san. Over and over again. The color of his skin, a dusky tan against the snowy linen but for the area between his hips and a handspan above knees. How it had gleamed in the half-light, damp with sweat, catching glints on the sharp angles and slick shadows in the hollows. The rise and fall of his chest. The darkness of his nipples. The sparse trail of hair down from his navel. And his hands. His hands… there. On himself. Touching.

Pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes, trying to stop  _seeing_  it, Shishido-san masturbating and that Shishido-san saw him, of course, because he kept standing there, too shocked even to back away and apologize or even to quietly close the door.

There's a lot of things he feels, but most of all he feels stupid. Very very stupid. Dumb and slow and naive.

He gets teased by his friends, being shy about it and slow on the uptake and the not ever wanting to talk about it. He knows they think him an innocent and that's okay, because he is, but now it will never be okay again.

He should've gotten it.

He should have.

He gets it when one of the other team-members slip away, suddenly, some with no explanation and others with half-excuses. Or like Oshitari, positively shameless. He  _gets_  the abrupt absences or the random need for showers and 'naps'. He gets the irregular rhythm of the shower sprays when they all clean up after practice.

They're teenage boys.

Ohtori does it, too.

Granted, not nearly as much as the others seem to do, because he feels awkward and weird knowing Jiroh-san or -even worse- Atobe-san is in the stall next to him. But sometimes he  _can't_  not. He's sixteen and has kissed a girl once. It was nice. The small curve of her breast under his palm was even better, when she put his hand there. Sometimes he thinks about it, when he touches himself, or at least in the beginning. Near the end it all gets more muddled and he can't really recall what he thinks about then. There's just the urgency to come -it never takes long to do so. And then he cleans up and continues whatever it was he was doing.

So he does it, too, and does it a lot at home and he  _gets_  it.

But for some reason Shishido's incomprehensible mumble about being tired and needing a nap after the game against Mukahi and Jiroh, he didn't get. He doesn't know why not. Shishido-san is… well, he's Shishido-san. And for some reason his very weak excuse to have some 'alone-time' didn't register. Now he realizes that Shishido is at least as private about it as he is, because never before there was a pointed non-silence in his shower stall and during the four nights they shared a room together there were no rustling sheets or creaking mattresses or anything conspicuously rhythmic but for the steady breathing in his sleep. So that means that for four nights -five days- he might not have… not like Ohtori, who can't seem to help himself and did it in the showers, or when Shishido -always an early riser- had already dressed and left in the mornings.

It's perfectly normal.

Except, for some reason, this is different.

He remembers once accidentally walking in on Hiyoshi, the spluttering and the profuse apologizing on his part. Hiyoshi's mutinous silence after, also an acutely private person. His awkward assurance of 'don't worry about it' and Hiyoshi snarling back 'I'm not!' and then somehow they forgot about it, because these things happen and they're both boys and it was just a little embarrassing. But nothing life-altering.

Ohtori remembers feeling concerned about Shishido, because why would he suddenly leave in middle of practice after a thundering win? Maybe the heat had made him unwell and he was too proud to admit it. Not only is he Ohtori's doubles partner, his senpai and the person he looks up to most, but also his very closest and best friend. They look out for one another. On the court and off it.

Most of all he remembers opening the door, lips parting to ask a stupid question and never asking it. Because Shishido-san had been on the bed, naked. His body had been caught between that state of intense relaxation and quivering tension and his head had been tipped back on the pillows, his hair spilling like rivulets of ink around his head. Eyes closed and lips parted barely, he'd lain there: hands working up and down and up and down and up and down and up and Ohtori had stood there and watched and had seen everything and had felt. Something. Something he doesn't know exactly what it was, but he knows that he's hiding here in the showers because he's afraid Shishido-san saw it, right there on his face. Ohtori had been looking at all of him -at the swollen lips and the taut body and his hands and -and his cock. Shishido's cock. Which had been hard -of course it had been- and new and just… just right and the same like his but different, or course, and just right.

He'd been staring at that, feeling something, still staring as the hands had stopped suddenly. And when he looked back at Shishido's face, Shishido's eyes had been open -nearly comically huge with shock and dark, so dark, like chips of coal and burning with both arousal and insetting fury.

It couldn't have taken longer than ten seconds, maybe even less, all that happened and Ohtori had not even managed to apologize. He'd just turned and ran, not even closing the door in his mindless retreat.

All that makes for an awful, horrible problem. But worse is that they're at one of Atobe's many retreats, training for the upcoming Nationals. So Ohtori can't even go home and hide all alone in his room, hoping that Shishido-san will have slept off most of his anger by the next day and they can pretend everything is normal and nothing happened ever and they're still best friends.

As it is he can't do any of that, they're here for a whole week and he shares a room with Shishido-san.

And now he's missed supper because he's too much of a coward to shrug it off and doesn't know any words that can dispel what happened like he said to Hiyoshi then. Surely there is some remark that can make it slightly amusing, or even just an apology, or anything that makes it just what it was: a seventeen year old boy masturbating and his friend accidentally walking in on him. That's all it was. Or should have been.

But Ohtori stood and looked and. And he felt something.

His heart thrums, everything between his eyes and knees feels squirmy, even more so when the image swims into focus again, unbidden. Shishido-san on his back, hands on his cock, gleaming. Pleasuring himself. Again, maddeningly, his whole attention stops to consider…  _it_ , again. Shishido's cock. He knows what a dick looks like, dammit, he's got one of his own and yet he can't not think about it, remember what it looked like. Like his own, but different. Smaller. More slender. Denser, darker hair around the base and just right. Perfectly right.

Everything is ruined.

It will never be okay again, after this.

Ohtori knows this because he knows why. He knows why he looked.

Because he liked what he saw.

***

It's likely that he'd have stayed and wallowed in his own misery until he expired from it left on his own. He can get like that.

He's rather sensitive at times, especially where Shishido-san is concerned. He's gotten like that before, over-thinking and dramatizing situations that aren't even half what they actually are, or aren't what he makes of them at all.

'Suck it up and be a man', Shishido-san sometimes even snaps at him when he over-over-over does it beyond any sort rationality. He'd been hurt the first time Shishido had said that, until he'd recognized the wry amusement and even fondness in his tone, realizing he'd gone and acted as much of a drama-queen as Shishido-san himself sometimes could be.

Right now he feels rather justified in feeling as wretched as he is, because is there any explanation for his standing there and watching? Not to mention running off and n _ot even closing the damn door_  to preserve what was left of Shishido's tattered dignity and privacy?

As it is, it's Hiyoshi who comes to see whether he's still alive.

"Ohtori-kun?" his voice comes, flat and slightly annoyed over the spray of his shower.

Ohtori closes his eyes and sees Shishido-san again, his vulnerable mouth and long shining hair and his cock, hard, wet. His angry, shocked eyes.

"Choutarou?" Hiyoshi repeats, slightly less annoyed and a little more worried. And, because he's smart and not dumb and stupid and naive like Ohtori is, he raps on the door of his stall and says: "Are you, uh, busy?"

Slowly, muscles cramped and frozen from sitting for hours under the cold water, he stands up. "I'm here," he croaks.

"Uh-huh," Hiyoshi goes, sounding rather exasperated.

"I'm just… taking a shower."

"Alright," Hiyoshi goes ambiguously, clearly uninterested in any details. "It's wasteful to use up so much water if you're not washing," he says.

Ohtori turns off the spray and grabs the now damp towel, wrapping it around him like a cape, huddling. He pushes the door open and steps onto the warm tiles, eyes averted. It's almost funny how far and how close Hiyoshi can be to the truth, at the same time.

"Your lips are blue," Hiyoshi remarks, frowning.

Silently, Ohtori discards the towel and starts putting on his clothes, still rank from all the sweating he did during practice. It was what he was wearing when he went to check on Shishido-san and it was what he was wearing when he came here to hide.

Hiyoshi watches him, eyes narrowed. "Have you been sulking?"

Shrugging into his shirt, Ohtori turns away from him.

There's a nearly audible eye-roll, so powerful is the gesture. "Don't tell me you two have been fighting again?" He goes, exceedingly irritated. "Can't you deal with it after the Nationals? You have to preserve your doubles play, your win is one we take for granted."

Ohtori feels a like of what might be anger, had he not been so miserable he can't rise to the emotion. "This is more serious than losing our game at the Nationals," he says, strained.

Hiyoshi stares at him as though he uttered a blasphemous remark about Hiyoshi's mother and a donkey.

"Forget it," Ohtori sighs.

Like Hiyoshi could ever understand what this is about.

"This isn't about your crush on Shishido-senpai, is it?" Hiyoshi asks.

Ohtori trips over his own feet and bangs his shins into the low bench.

"Can't you have this crisis  _after_  the Nationals?" Hiyoshi goes on, growing rather agitated.

"I don't have a -a crush on Shishido-san!" He says. Or rather squeaks.

Again that look. The one where Hiyoshi is looking at him as though he's speaking Swahili. Hiyoshi tends to do that a lot around him, Ohtori has noticed.

"You don't," Hiyoshi repeats, slowly.

"No!" Ohtori goes, voice rather hight and shrill in a very, very lame way. "Of course not!"

"Okay," Hiyoshi says. "Fine. No crisis then. I don't have time for that particular kind of crisis of yours, not with Nationals so close."

Ohtori blinks at him. His shins ache, scraped raw.

Hiyoshi considers him, lips pursed. "If you still need to crisis you are free to do so after the Nationals," he allows. "Just not now."

"To crisis is not a verb," Ohtori weakly points out.

"Where you and Shishido-senpai are concerned, it is," Hiyoshi mutters.

"There's no crisis!" Ohtori insists.

"Okay," Hiyoshi says, lifting his hands. "Words cannot express my relief that there isn't. Though I wonder why you were still here, under a cold shower, after midnight, and why Shishido-senpai is even more… ah,  _difficult_  to put up with than usual. But now that you have assured me that these facts are entirely unrelated and will have no effect whatsoever on your doubles game, I can go and sleep soundly knowing that your win is guaranteed at the Nationals. Which we will win also. Right?"

That last word sounds to Ohtori rather like a threat to his life, so he nods and tries to look completely calm and suave and confident. He suspects he comes off appearing as if he's about to hurl, because Hiyoshi looks genuinely concerned after that.

And when they walk back under a star spangled sky, Hiyoshi says softly, "It'll be alright. Don't worry about it."

Ohtori's lips tremble, his hands curl into fists as he walks with laden feet back towards his room.

The room he shares with Shishido-san.

***

The house is quiet when they return. All is hazy shadows and profound silence but for the soft strain of insects buzzing in the night. It's warm: a heady, sweat-inducing press of heat, but Ohtori finds himself shivering slightly. He was under that shower much too long.

That, and he doesn't think he was this nervous since playing the Nationals second year of middle school.

There's much he'd give for not having to go back to that room right now. His feet seem like leaden weights and the rest of his body rather off-center as though he drifts besides his physical self a step to the left and slightly behind. Hiyoshi is silent, and Ohtori doesn't know what to say to him, doesn't know if he could talk now what with his heart pounding so hard it's strangling his throat.

Hiyoshi stops at the room he shares with Jiroh-senpai. Ohtori stops, too. He swallows. His throat bobs with difficulty and the sound is almost indecent in the stillness.

It's one of the few times Ohtori wishes he wouldn't find all this feelings stuff so hard to talk about, and maybe even for boys to be more like… girls. Then he could've talked about it to Hiyoshi and maybe figured something out together and Ohtori could've had asked whether Hiyoshi thinks Shishido-san hates him now. Though he also thinks this he'd rather die than talk about it.

And Hiyoshi only says: "Good night." all solemn and unhelpful, before going inside and closing the door in Ohtori's face.

Dragging his feet, Ohtori makes for his own room. Opens the door carefully.

He doesn't know what he'd prefer. For Shishido-san to be asleep and thus postponing the confrontation until morning, or for him to be awake and so there _can_  be a confrontation about it, however bad or not, allowing Ohtori to deal with it. Both have merit, maybe come morning it won't look so bad anymore and Shishido-san might have been able to swallow his humiliation and maybe even it's okay that they ignore it then. But Ohtori knows he'll forever be stuck with the situation, because he can't forget and it'd be always there -a ticking bomb. On the other hand, if Shishido is awake they can- well, figure it out. Maybe it isn't so bad and they just have an awkward moment, or Shishido will get angry and tell him he's… he's gross for  _watching_  like he did and that he left the door open and that he's dumb and childish and that he hates him and they'll never be friends again.

All that flashes through his mind as he steps inside, closes the door, and takes a deep breath before looking.

Shishido is awake.

He's sitting on his bed, wearing shorts and an oversized t-shirt that he has pulled over his up-drawn knees, back to the wall. His hair is a disaster, as though he's tried to sleep and has been unable to, it hangs in dark tangles around his face. In the little light spilling in through the windows, his eyes gleam as he stares up at Ohtori.

Ohtori's heart hammers painfully.

Neither of them say anything as Ohtori takes off his sweaty clothes and takes a clean t-shirt to wear instead. Past few nights both of them slept just in their boxers, because it is so damn warm. But Shishido is wearing a shirt now and it makes Ohtori want to cover up, too.

It doesn't take very long and it leaves Ohtori just standing there, feeling more useless and ashamed than ever.

"You're awake," he manages at last. The soft whisper is atrociously loud as it breaks the silence.

Shishido nods. "Yeah," he says, and his gaze drops self-consciously to this toes poking out from under the hem of his shirt. He wiggles them and nods some more. "I couldn't sleep," he adds.

Ohtori feels more like an ass than ever.

"I'm sorry!" the words burst from him as though violently removed there by a team of pulling horses. "Shishido-san, I swear- I'm so-"

"Choutarou," Shishido says.

He stops himself, swallows convulsively.

Shishido scoots aside, towards the head end of the bed. Making room for him, Ohtori realizes.

After a hesitation that lasts far too long for it to be a natural pause, Ohtori walks over and crawls onto the bed. They sit side-by-side, backs to the wall. They're not touching, but Ohtori finds him suddenly very aware that he can  _smell_  Shishido. He's not sure he's ever noticed it like he has now, yet the scent is not unfamiliar. It's all boy; musky and sharp, with some soap and sweat and grass in there and, Ohtori realizes, not unfamiliar at all and very, uniquely, Shishido-san. The boy part of it is indefinable, all Shishido-san himself and oddly… dual in nature. Or its effect is. On Ohtori. At first it's comforting: taking some edge off his misery, lessening the cold clump of dread stuck in his belly. But then there is the sudden rather being very aware of it and the more he thinks about it the more he finds himself liking it  _too_  much.

He's not even able to convince himself that he doesn't want to lean in and press his face against the side of Shishido's throat.

This is stupid. He's never ever had thoughts like these. Not like this. It's true that he thought a lot about Shishido-san and in the soft daze before sleep he'd fantasize about them playing tennis together and he somehow being really really good and winning their game for them, or maybe even managing to keep someone like Kirihara from hurting Shishido during the match and his senpai being really, well. Happy and grateful and full of praise and awe. Maybe he'd hug Ohtori. He knows full-well that Shishido would make anyone stupid enough to 'accidentally on purpose' knock a ball into him eat their racket. He knows that he'd  _hate_  to be protected like that, like he couldn't do it on his own. But it's just fantasies and Ohtori isn't about to apply this in real life. Like in real life, when he plays the piano when Shishido is around, his senpai is just all quiet and simply watches. But in his fantasies he'd ask Ohtori to teach him to play the piano and Ohtori'd say 'yes, I'd love to' and take his hands to guide them as he explained how.

Or they'd be stuck during a sort of camping trip out in the dark, cold, just the two of them. And Ohtori who is always better prepared would have a blanket on hand and offer to share… and.

Ohtori stops himself. Tries his very best not to burst out in hysterical laughter.

What does it say about him that Hiyoshi figured something like  _this_  out way before he did?

 

But maybe, well. It's maybe normal. Shishido is a boy. Ohtori is a boy. Maybe his brain, out of self-preservation or sheer naïveté, never made the link that being both boys doesn't mean they can't kiss and touch, too. Yet he knows there's boys who do, he's not that stupid. But somehow knowing that there's boys who like to kiss other boys was not enough to figure out that maybe, just maybe, he'd like to try and kiss Shishido-san, too. It seemed apart, something that happened, not even remotely related to himself.

His chest aches. Would he? Would he really? Ohtori tries to imagine kissing Shishido-san. It's strange. The concept doesn't work at first. Shishido is his  _senpai_. And he's never seen Shishido kiss anybody, ever. And Ohtori hasn't more than one experience to try and match it against. Kissing that girl, the one who was all bold and put his hand over her breast. What was her name again? He can't recall. It had happened before he knew it. It'd been nice. Ohtori'd thought he'd enjoyed the over-all experience, despite the not knowing what to do when and her lipgloss being overwhelmingly strawberry flavored.

But when he thinks about leaning in and kissing Shishido, everything is very vague. He can't fathom any sort of comparison to another experience, something that would match what Shishido's lips'd feel like or what he'd taste like. Not even how his body would feel against the palms of Ohtori's hands. The idea is there, of kissing him, but the details scatter and hide and can't figure out what to think of it.

That girl had been very slight, slender, his hands had seemed indecently clumsy and brutal on her. Her mouth had been full and soft. Her hair had been as fine as candy floss, clinging in nearly invisible strands between their mouths.

Shishido is… well, he isn't anything like a girl. True, he's slender and lean, lighter than Ohtori is. But there's nothing delicate about him, not even with the long hair. And that part isn't even the same either, actually. Shishido's hair is all dark chaos, hanging more in his face than off it. Of course it's usually brushed and all smoothly tied up in a ponytail, but rarely loose like it is now. It's very long, Ohtori notices. At least as long as it used to be, before he cut it, or maybe even longer. And his mouth… its. Well, not like a girl's either. Sure it works the same: he's got an upper and bottom lip, too, and teeth and a tongue, so the actual mechanics can't be anything new. But Shishido's mouth hardly invites to kissing when it's in a scowl like that. His lips are thinner, too. More severe. And he doesn't smile all nice as much as he does that lop-sided little grin of his. They don't shine all prettily with some sort of gloss. Instead they're of a fleshy hue darker than his skin, only vaguely pink.

No, he doesn't know what to think of how it would be like to touch Shishido's mouth with his own -and what a curious gesture that turns out to be, now he thinks of it. What he does know is that he's more curious about it than averse to it and that he'd… well, he'd  _like_  to know. If only if it would mean that he'd be close to Shishido for a moment, near his hair and to smell him better. Maybe embrace him, and pay careful attention to how his body would feel against his, the sharp angles and muscle and flat planes. Ohtori knows he'd like that. The holding part. He's always liked it when Shishido touched him, the only person who he doesn't mind it from. The fistbumps and friendly arms slung around his shoulders are always a special sort of reward, when Shishido does them.

Ohtori ponders all these very basic things, the kissing, the embracing and holding, all the while being hyper aware that the boy who is sitting next to him was only this afternoon spread out wearing nothing at all on this very selfsame bed. His hands on himself… on his. Between his legs. And Ohtori had seen him do it and he knows, shamefully, that he liked what he saw then. Everything. From the dusky nipples down the hard flat of Shishido's stomach, muscles etching shadowy grooves here and there, to his cock. That had been the same but different. And very hard.

And yet he can't figure out what kissing him would be like.

"You're very quiet," Shishido says on a soft exhale.

Ohtori manages a stunted shrug. "Just thinking. Sorry." He adds again, for good measure.

There's a little silence. "I'm sorry, too," Shishido bites out, putting his chin on his knees and closing his eyes tightly.

"Don't be!" Ohtori says immediately, fiercer and rougher than he meant to. "Don't be. It's okay."

Shishido turns his face away. "You know it's not. We both know it."

His eyes feel hot and itchy, like there's vaseline smeared in them. He doesn't want this to happen. He doesn't want Shishido to acknowledge it's not okay, not while he doesn't know what to say to something like that.

As he looks to the side, to see what's on Shishido's face, he sees another person. A boy, somewhat older than him. His skin is dark from the summer sun, but still pale in the moonlight. He's not as tall as Ohtori, and he doesn't have his shoulders or chest either. Everything about him suggests movement, even as his body is hidden in a huddle under his t-shirt. He's tired and frowning. There's a small disruption in his left eyebrow, near the corner, hairs missing and skin scarred shiny. His face is all angles, sharp and finely made, a neat nose above an unhappy mouth. His eyes are dark, slanted. Intense, even shuttered like this. His lashes are thick, dark, an echo of the dark irises. They are beautiful eyes. He has very thick and long hair, scrunched up around his face and neck from restless hands playing with it. The line of his throat, the bare shoulder where the shirt gapes look incorrigibly vulnerable.

Ohtori looks at this boy, who looks just as afraid and confused and worried as he is -only more scowly and frowny about it, and asks: "Can I kiss you, Shishido-san?"

Maybe he saw it coming, the way they know what the other will do on the court before he moves to do so, before there even is a reason to. He lifts his head and looks at him, but nothing else and his mouth looks entirely un-kissable: lips pressed shut hard, a flat, nearly white as he bites back a mess of emotions with sheer determination.

Leaning in to touch his mouth against Shishido must be the bravest and most reckless thing Ohtori's ever done. Especially when he's only ever conceived the notion of kissing Shishido-san but a few moments ago, has not been able to over-over-over-think it as he prefers to do with the really important things and isn't even sure whether he's even allowed to.

Shishido didn't tell him yes.

But when he's nearly there, almost, he can feel Shishido suddenly exhale once hard and controlled, as his lips relax and his head dips… just so. Just so that when their mouths touch, it's… well. Perfect.

Ohtori didn't know what to expect, not even the moment their mouths connected, but whatever it was, it wasn't this. Not the sudden, intimate softness of the connection, the abrupt alien heat of Shishido's parted lips and how  _soft_  they are, his lips, warm and sleek and new. They both still for a moment, leaning into the connection carefully. Ohtori can feel the staccato tempo of Shishido's heart where his shoulder presses into Ohtori's chest, or maybe that's his own, pounding hard and strong against his ribs. Shishido breathes again, it tickles between the small sliver of space where the natural grooves of their mouths don't connect and Ohtori automatically licks his lips.

There's the most wonderful sound out of Shishido-san he's  _ever_  heard, a soft, throaty, ' _hah_ '.

He didn't know Shishido-san was capable of such a noise, something so unguarded and gentle, with barely any voice and yet a rumble in his throat.

A hand ghosts over the back of his arm, unsure. Ohtori leans in deeper, lips moist now and moves them against Shishido's. It doesn't matter that he's still not sure how it works, because Shishido moves them  _back_ , along his own, slanting for an angle that rakes fire up Ohtori's spine. It involves getting close, and closer, and then Ohtori very carefully lifts a hand to rest it on a sharp shoulder. The cotton of the shirt is thin, the skin underneath warm.

They kiss with their lips parted and Ohtori begins to  _taste_  Shishido, subtle and faintly salty, and this is simply something he couldn't have imagined ever. Not his own shaking hands and harried heartbeat, the aching sweetness of those lips, the scent of another boy, the strength in the body under his hand. The knowledge that Shishido's saliva is on his mouth, as the inside of his lips drag, then settle on Ohtori's bottom one.

He suckles. Ohtori's mouth parts and Shishido moves up and then, somehow, their tongues are touching.

It's all very strange. Ohtori can't figure out how to angle his head and whether their mouths are supposed to be seamlessly locked together, or whether this is okay, being slightly apart and meeting in the middle at the threshold of one other's lips. He kinda figured that kissing with tongues involved… well, _sticking_  your tongue in the other's mouth, but this isn't quite like that. There's no force or pressure, just Shishido close to him and tasting and caressing and clinging kisses between the sensation of feeling heat and softness.

And then Shishido suddenly stops. The brief glimpse Ohtori catches from his face there's abject terror in his eyes. He's biting his lip, hard.

Ohtori doesn't know what to say. All he knows is that he couldn't stand up if his life depended on it and that his shorts are way too tight and that his heart is pounding all the way up in his throat and that when he got up this morning he'd never have believed that by the end of the day he'd have the taste of Shishido's mouth lingering over his lips.

And he'd never,  _ever_  have believed he'd have the guts to reach for Shishido's chin, tilt his face towards his and kiss the corner of his mouth. Shishido's hands curl between their chests, like he's trying to figure out whether he wants to push Ohtori away or yank him closer.

Then he mumbles, "I don't get it."

Ohtori embraces him, holds him until Shishido's arms settle gingerly around his shoulders. It takes a while, but then Shishido rests his head against the side of Ohtori's throat and he does the same -breathes in.

"I didn't either. But… this is okay, right? I mean… this could work," he whispers against Shishido's temple.

Shishido's body shakes as he chuckles a little wildly. "Could work."

"I… I'm sorry about this afternoon. I'm sorry I ran- I-" because I liked too much what I saw, is what he doesn't add. "I've never-" kissed a guy before "I've never- ah. But, I like you. Shishido-san. I like you."

Something melts in Shishido, almost like all his muscles were taut with tension and fear and only now he dares to relax a little. A faint tremor remains, all over his body. "This is a little sudden. How can you know-" he sighs and a hand on his sleeve crushes the fabric in his fist.

Right then Ohtori realiases that Shishido has thought of  _this_  before this afternoon (… or maybe even during?). Thought about it because he wanted it. It's not sudden for him -or at least the only thing that is sudden is Ohtori wanting to try and kiss him after catching him masturbating.

So, okay, perhaps it's a bit weird.

Or a lot.

But it is okay.

"It's okay," Ohtori tells him and starts to smile. "We can take it slowly. Get used to- to this. It's okay."

Finally, Shishido leans bodily into him. A shaky exhale leaves him, not a sob, Shishido-san doesn't sob… not quite. Ohtori smiles into his hair and holds him and knows that this is okay. So yes, this -they- need time. But that's fine. A lot of couples need that.

And yes, sure, they're both boys and Ohtori is barely sixteen and it  _is_  kinda weird.

But when he has Shishido in his arms like this and he can't stop smiling and he hopes he's allowed to kiss him again soon… Well. What about that isn't perfectly normal?

  
  
  
  


_-fin-_


End file.
